Toast
by AmyBot3000
Summary: Fluffy toast AU. Before they became Doctor Holly Stewart and Officer Gail Peck, Holly was working in a cafe and Gail was doing temporary office work across the street. They bond over their future dreams and toast.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N** : This has been sitting on my phone for far too long. Anyway. Some of you might remember toast girl. Long story short: I had a lot of emotions for a girl that used give me toast, she left before I could make my emotions known.

This is a semi retelling of that story with a few fundamental changes to make myself and toast girl a bit more Gail and Holly like.

* * *

Gail was dying and nobody cared.

She should have stayed home in the warm depths of her bed, yet here she was, slowly creeping up the track towards her stop on the train. Possibly her final stop. A hard cough ripped from her chest. Yes. Gail was definitely dying, and not for the first time that morning she cursed her dying mind for thinking it was good idea to start the commute.

The train jerked into the station, and Gail sniffled loudly as the doors opened, blasting her with cold air.

It was winter. She was dying in the harsh, harsh depths of winter. At least it would be a mildly poetic death.

Gail was sure there was something she had done terribly wrong in a former life. There was no other explanation for the fact she was dying and currently having to push her way through a crowd of ungrateful commuters to get to work. She smiled at the familiar tingling in her nose, and the blonde drew in a quick breath.

The effect was akin to something Gail had once seen in a documentary; when the twitchy herd of wildebeast realised there was in fact a crocodile in front of them. Gail was the crocodile. They were the wildebeast.

The sneeze was quick, hard and effective. The crowd in front of her scattered, giving her room to finally exit the carriage. Reaching out, Gail had to steady her swaying body on the bald head of the only person still trying to push past her.

She wasn't entirely sure how she made it up the steps, or how she made it down the steps on the other side of the walkway. All Gail knew was the small cafe she occasionally visited was less than two minutes away. It was going to save her life, preserve her very existence, make the world a better place. It was going to supply her with coffee. All she needed was one cup, just one small cup and she wouldn't be dying any more.

Letting out a frustrated groan, Gail waited as car after car continued to block her route. She timed her run perfectly. At least... In her mind she had planned a run. What actually happened was a slow amble, her muscles aching and protested at every step her barely moving feet were making.

If she had more energy she might have sworn at the car horn that blared at her. The warmth of the cafe wrapped around her, warming her cold gloveless hands.

"Awww, sweetie. You're not looking too good." The woman on the other side of the counter greeted.

In the three months, nine days of working in the office block across the street, Gail had never once seen the stranger before. With her long brown hair and ridiculous lop sided smile, Gail would have remembered her. The woman pushed her glasses up her nose and dropped the book she was reading onto the counter.

"Col-" Gail's voice wheezed before outright giving up and turning into a breathy whimper. This was not the first impression she wanted to make. "Der." In that moment, Gail wanted to throw herself into the glass casing of the counter. It had gone from bad to horrific, and Gail wanted to go right back to dying again.

"I'm translating that as you have a cold?" The stranger asked.

Gail didn't trust her voice to not make her look like a complete imbecile again. Instead she nodded. The moment her head tilted forwards, she regretted her choice. The low thrum of her headache was suddenly sending spikes of pain across her temple and she grumbled incoherently at the feeling. The other woman was smiling though and making the most ridiculous cooing noises that just made Gail want to curl up and disappear.

Gail did not need to be cooed at. She was Gail God Damn Peck. The same Gail who had once tackled what turned out to be an armed robber to the floor. The same Gail who was one day going to be the meanest, most bad ass police officer Canada had ever seen.

At least she would be if she survived this plague.

"Tell you what, sit down there and I'll make you some toast. On the house."

Gail wanted to protest, because the woman was clearly new, and giving away food when you were new was definitely not how to keep your new job. Unfortunately, her voice chose that moment to fail her. Once again, Gail wheezed.

"I'm Holly by the way, just started over the weekend. Do you come here often?" The brunette asked over her shoulder as she popped a slice of bread in the toaster.

"Gail." Swallowing, the blonde tried to desperately hold back the cough she could feel building. "Yes."

It would have to do, and Gail felt like screaming because Holly had left herself wide open. There was a definitely a witty response Gail could have hit back with to impress her, but she was dying and all her mind could come up with was a jumbled mess of cat metaphors.

"You're not dying. Trust me, I'm going to be a doctor one day." Holly paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. "Sort of."

Gail groaned. In her sickened, fevered state, she had said something aloud. Her eyes widened horror. She had most definitely thought about how beautiful Holly was, and oh God, what if she had said that aloud too?

"Hey, did I call you beautiful out loud?" Why was her voice suddenly so clear? Why couldn't it have stayed stuck at a pathetic wheeze? "I think I'm dying."

Let no one say Gail couldn't recover from a potentially embarrassing situation.

Holly lifted a single eyebrow. "Of a cold or embarrassment?"

Gail couldn't answer, at least not in a way that wasn't going to somehow end in her accidentally propositioning the other woman. "Both."

"Well," Holly smiled as she scrapped a knob of butter across the freshly popped toast. "If you don't die, maybe you should come visit again."

Gail stared at her blankly. She had just sniffled her way into the cafe, her pale skin practically grey, and her nose redder than she had ever seen it. Yet here was toast girl inviting her back. Gail's mouth opened and closed a couple of times as she tried to come up with a response that would in some way reassure Holly that she wasn't a completely disaster.

"You too." Gail finally replied, her eyes closing at Holly's bemused expression.

Even is she did survive, there was no way Gail could ever go back.

* * *

 **A/N** : There will be further chapters at some point.  
Hope everyone had a good holidays :)


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N** : A second chapter! YAY!

I'm not entirely sure how long this is going to be. My phone notes cover the whole story, but they're not broken down into chapters particularly well!

* * *

The bell above Gail's head jingled loudly as she pushed open the door to the cafe. It had been two weeks since she had last ventured inside. Both her death plague and shame had kept her away.

Holly was behind the counter again, a thick book held in her hand. Gail approached slowly. The brunette hadn't realised it was her yet, so she took the time to study the features of Holly's face. Despite her delusional state, her memory had been right about how beautiful the other girl was.

Holly's brown eyes darted over the page for a moment longer before she dropped the bookmark between the pages of the book and closed it. The moment her gaze met Gail's, a smile tugged at the side of her mouth.

"Reading on the job again?" Gail asked, her voice completely free of cold.

Putting the book down on the counter, Holly continued to smile at her. "Studying on the job. You survived then?"

"Just." She replied dryly. "Listen, about the other week-"

"When you called me beautiful?"

Sometimes Gail hated the fact she was so pale. Whenever she felt her cheeks flushing a dangerous shade of red, she knew her complexion would do nothing to hide it. It meant she was currently, incredibly aware that Holly could see the bright crimson blossoming across her face.

"Yeah, okay, technically I didn't call you beautiful, I just asked if I'd said it out loud." Gail rebuked weakly.

"Uh-huh." Holly replied biting at her lip. "So what brings you here today?"

What brought her there was the fact that ever since seeing Holly, Gail had struggled to think of anything else. "Coffee." She answered instead.

"That all?"

"Mhmm." Gail hummed, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her coat.

Holly's eyes squinted at her. "Have you had breakfast?"

"Okay, mom." The blonde said, rolling her eyes. "No I haven't had breakfast."

Holly looked almost offended. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Trust me, one day I will be a sort of doctor."

The words sounded familiar. Gail racked her memory, trying to pin point exactly when it was she had heard them.

"You said that last time." Gail remembered aloud. Holly looked at her questioningly. "The thing about becoming a kind of doctor."

"Oh right. My patients won't actually be..." The brunette tilted her head. "Alive."

"You want to work with dead people?"

"Yep. Living people are just so much more complicated." Holly shrugged. "When they're dead, they can't answer back."

Gail could relate to that. It wasn't that she disliked people. She just disliked it when they were around her. "If my day goes as well as yesterday, you can have a whole office of dead bodies to look at." She offered.

Holly laughed as she popped some bread into the toaster. "Not sure that will look good on your police application form."

Gail was about to reply when Holly's words truly sunk in. Even though she had been in a state of practical delirium, Gail had no recollection of revealing her dreams to become a police officer to the other girl.

"What?" Holly asked, clearly picking up on her confusion.

"How did you know I wanted to become an officer of the law?" She questioned suspiciously.

Holly suddenly looked unsure of herself. Turning around, the brunette busied herself with the coffee machine. "Oh, I'm sure you mentioned it last time you were here."

Gail squinted at Holly's back. She had barely been able to string two coherent sentences together when she was last in the cafe. "No I didn't."

Sheepishly, Holly turned around again. "Okay, so when you didn't come back last week, I _might_ have asked one of your colleagues if you were okay."

"Ugh, it was Brett, wasn't it?"

"Tall guy, red hair, glasses?"

Gail sighed. He had been winking at her all week. She thought it was some convoluted attempt at hitting on her, so she had avoided contact with him more aggressively than usual.

"Wait, you asked about me?" A smug grin broke out across Gail's face. "Awww, Holly, were you worried about me?"

The other girl glared at her playfully. "I was worried my favourite customer wasn't coming back."

"I'm only your favourite because I called you beautiful." Gail froze. Oh God. She hadn't meant to say that. It completely nullified her earlier protest.

A triumphant smile appeared on Holly's face. "So you do think I'm beautiful then?"

Gail grumbled under her breath whilst Holly busied herself with the coffee machine again, pressing the buttons until it whirled into life and dispensed Gail's coffee into the Styrofoam cup.

"Are you making me toast?" Gail suddenly asked when the toaster popped.

"Yup, can't have my favourite customer going hungry" Holly smiled, "it's on the house."

The blonde creased her brow and she frowned. "Aren't you going to get in trouble for that?"

Holly started to butter the freshly popped toast. "It's not like I want to work here forever." She shrugged.

"Yeah, but if you get fired, you won't get to see your favourite customer any more." Gail pointed out with a subtle pout.

The sentence had caused a pang in Gail's chest. It wasn't like she expected Holly to work in the cafe forever. Not if she had dreams of becoming a doctor. Even if the brunette didn't plan on leaving, Gail would be gone in the next year when the next round of rookies were accepted into the academy anyway.

She had a year to make a move. Possibly. If she could ever stop embarrassing herself.

The knife froze in Holly's hand at Gail's comment. "That's a good point." She said before continuing.

"Hang on, is this a sales tactic?" Gail asked, her hand covering her chest in as she opened her mouth in an over the top show of shock.

"What? Butter you up then make you pay for toast you didn't order? Nope, but now you've suggested it..."

Gail took the coffee and toast from Holly. "You sure you want to confess that to a future cop?" She asked.

"Well, I did give you free toast last time." Holly mused. "That must let me off at least once."

Gail hummed. "Pretty sure that's bribery, which is also an arrestable offence."

With a smirk on her face, Holly winked at her. "When are you going to cuff me then, officer?" Heat swirled in Gail's stomach at Holly's more than suggestive look. Once again, she cursed the fact she was so pale.

"I don't know," Gail said, lowering her voice an octave. "When are you going to show me a dead body?"

Holly's head tiled to the side, her brow creasing worriedly at the blonde's comment.

Truly, after this, Gail could never go back.

* * *

 **A/N** : There will be a third chapter at some point. Thank you for the reviews btw, it was nice to see so many familiar names still here in the Golly fandom :)


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